Today’s prompt: Where is the best place to watch the sunset near you?
I did not take this photo. It could, however, have been taken right in my front yard. Our house faces north, and we often get displays similar to this one. I’m sure there are other more scenic views in our beautiful state, but this is the one we see the most often without having to drive anywhere to enjoy it.
Today’s prompt: What would you title the chapters of your autobiography?
Chapter One: Birth (one page)
Chapter Two: Life. (7.5 pages, one for each decade of my life)
Chapter Three: And Now, in Closing. . . .(one page)
Honestly, I couldn’t get serious about this one. I’ve had a good life. I’ve done some stupid stuff, some awful stuff, and a lot of good stuff. Nothing that couldn’t be said by zillions of other people who, like me, will never write an autobiography 🙂
Today’s Prompt: What is something you learned recently?
I was curious. If islands are simply the above-water tops of massive under-water mountains or mountain ranges, then what about continents? Are they also anchored to the floor of the ocean by vast mountain ranges?
So I did some research, and found that many geologist agree that continents are indeed the visible tops of mountain ranges. That the major difference between islands and continents is size.
When I shared this concept with my science-minded husband, he had some very good questions about how it could be possible that continents are simply very large islands. His questions made a lot of sense. So now I’m reading about continental drift and colliding mountain ranges and that island that is forming in the Pacific from an underwater volcano.
What I’m learning is that I don’t know very much 🙂
Here’s one of the articles I’m reading:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/volcanic-eruption-creates-a-new-island-in-the-south-pacific-1809
Today’s Prompt: What is your favorite birthday cake?
Years ago, on a visit to Hersey, PA, I purchased of copy of Hersey’s Original Chocolate Cookbook. Among the many treasures in the book was a recipe for triple-layer chocolate fudge cake with chocolate fudge icing.
It became the cake of choice for many years as my four kids grew up. My husband doesn’t have a chocolate gene, poor man, so of the six birthday cakes I made each year, his was a rich, buttery pound cake with berries and whipped cream. Really good, but meh. Not chocolate 🙂
I’m diabetic now. The kids are all married and out of the house. I haven’t made my favorite birthday cake in a very long time. Sigh.
Todays’ prompt: What are the pros and cons of procrastination?
As a procrastinator par excellence, I can think of no really good reasons to put things off. When I do,
they always circle back around to bite me. Procrastinating requires the fine skill of lying to oneself, along with the skill of lying to others about why an assignment, chore, and so on has not been accomplished. It’s terribly uncomfortable to have to explain away something that has no believable explanation.
There are times, I suppose, when procrastinating ends well for all concerned. Given enough time, I could probably think of a good example. But I don’t have time. I have obligations today that can’t be put off 🙂
Today’s prompt: What language do you wish you could speak?
Actually, there are two.
As a high school freshman, I took a year of Spanish. We moved, and the new school didn’t offer Spanish, so I chose German instead. Two years in high school, and two more in college, gave me a working knowledge. Of course, that was all a VERY long time ago. If you don’t use the language, you lose it. I can still read a bit, enough to understand parts what is written, but I cannot have a conversation in either Spanish or German.
I don’t know if my tired old brain is up to learning either language, but if I could, I would love to speak both Spanish and German.
Maybe I should try that app that I see advertised. 🙂
Today’s prompt: What is a song or poem that speaks to you and why
Y’all are asking me to go count the grains of sand on the seashore.
My head is always full of music, and that music is often accompanied by words. Music tends to stay with me, all the way from advertising jingles to soul-stirring songs like The Hallelujah Chorus.
I was eight when we got our first television set. That would have been 1955. Here’s an ad I can still sing, word for word, from 1954-5:
While it’s not exactly soul-stirring, it’s a good example of how music/poetry stays in my head. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot of things from nearly 70 years ago, but not music. And not poetry if it is set to music.
All this to say, I can’t tell you my MOST soul-stirring music or poetry. There’s just too much.
Ask me about my favorite flavor of ice cream, and I can tell you without even thinking about it. Favorite pie? Key Lime. Favorite color? Red. Purple. Favorite meal? Pot roast.
Favorite song or poem? Uhhhhhh. . . . . . . . .
Today’s prompt: How Do You Show Love?
(I just read back through my post. I need to add that there is no criticism intended in what I have written. We all do what we think is best, and we’re all different in our perspectives of what is best. Your story may be–and should be!–very different from mine, and that’s as it should be.)
I’m looking forward to reading what others have to say about this one. We all show love according to our particular personality, experience, and understanding of what love is.
My own love languages are acts of service and physical touch.
What that means in practical terms–and I’ve been told I’m a highly practical person–is that I would show my love and concern for you more by what I DO than by what I say, or how much time I may be able to spend with you. My husband is also an acts of service kind of guy. For instance, just this morning I knocked a bowl of hot oatmeal onto the floor (age is making inroads!) and he was there in a heartbeat to send me to lie down while he cleaned up the mess. That’s a loving act of service. I should probably include here that I’m pretty sure I have mono and have been drained of energy and craving nothing but quietness and sleep. He has stepped in to relieve me of whatever he can, as he always does when I’m not feeling good.
I showed my family my love by keeping our house clean and in order; making meals from scratch, keeping their clothing clean and mended, caring for them when they were sick. In other words, I was a stay-at-home wife and mom when my kids were small. One thing I did that they all loved was to bake our own bread every week. I’ve made literally thousands of loaves of bread over our 53+ years of marriage. It was two things–economy and knowing that they loved it. Also, it was knowing that I was providing them with healthy, additive-free and chemical-free food.
You may be thinking, “But didn’t you enjoy what you were doing, too? Couldn’t you have provided a better income, helped your husband, if you had gone to work?” The answer to that first question is NO, I did not love housecleaning, EVER. It’s one of those chores that you do because you don’t want your family living in a slovenly, filthy environment. I did enjoy cooking and baking, but that doesn’t take away from doing it for their health and enjoyment. The second question? I helped financially by the way I kept house, doing lots of sewing to save money on clothing. Back then, it was still less expensive to sew than it was to buy ready-made. Not so much, now, and I probably wouldn’t do it that way if I were starting all over in today’s economy.
I also canned and froze lots of food, made our own jams and jellies, and found many other ways to keep from spending a lot of money. If I had worked outside our home, we would have had to pay for daycare for our own children while I spent my days teaching other people’s children. Makes no sense to me! And my husband did not want me working outside the home during those years.
I guess I’ve gone off track a bit.
As for the physical touch part, that comes very easily and naturally to me. I’ve actually had to learn to be careful, observing people’s reactions to a touch on the arm or a quick hug. Not everyone is comfortable with physical touch, so I do try to be discerning. We were taught, in my schooling to be a psychotherapist, not to touch our clients. For the most part, I didn’t. But there were times when it was so clear that some kind of touch was desperately needed. I learned to offer a quick squeeze of a hand, which could easily become a hug with my client crying on my shoulder. And that was perfectly okay with both of us.
Today’s prompt: What’s a lie you tell yourself?
So what’s the lie? “This year, I’m going to lose the weight!”
I’m not as big as my poor cartoon character, but I certainly sympathize with her. And I have, very slowly, managed to lose about 50 pounds. But I’m stuck, and fighting like mad to not gain it all back. It would probably take me about two days to regain what took me two years to lose!
I suppose I have insulin resistance. I also come from a gene pool of —um—-“substantial” people. And I love all the foods that I shouldn’t have. Added to that mix, exercise is difficult for me because of my wonky back. But still, I haven’t given up. Maybe, this year, I really WILL lose the weight!
Today’s prompt: What was your dream job as a child?
I had lots of big ideas when I was a kid. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be a concert pianist. I wanted to write. I wanted to be married and have a family.
So What happened? I did marry and have a family. I have been a teacher. I did learn to play piano–still working on that one. And I do write, just not the novels I used to think I wanted to write.
Then I added a new idea. I went back to school at age 50 to get a master’s degree that would enable me to do private practice counseling, which I did for 18 years before I retired.
I’ve had a very cool life 🙂
Just Writing! 